r free file options. as for sarah, we're sure she'll discover how to save on her taxes, eventually. >> jamie: good transition to the journal editorial report i guess, have a good day. >> paul: this week on the journal editorial report, sarah palin's prospects fresh from the tea party performance, some say she doesn't have with an it takes to be president, but do liberals mock her at their peril and the climate crackup. the cap and trade bell gets buried in the u.n. and the under fire for faulty findings. end game in iran, what's next for the self-described nuclear state? an internal revolution, an israeli attack? welcome to the journal editorial report, i'm stuart varney in this week or paul gigot. first up, sarah palin's prospects fresh from head long the first ever national tea party convex, palin told chris

wallace last week, she isn't ruling out a run for the presidency in 2012. >> i would, i would if i believed that that is the right thing to do for our country and for the palin family, certainly. i would do so. i think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that i can potentially do to help our country. >> this despite a new poll showing her unfavorable ratings up and qualifications for president being called into question. joining the panel this week, wall street journal columnist and deputy editor. bret stevens and joe, and colin levy. all right, dan, the poll suggests that we should count her out, should we? >> i don't think so, stuart. if you take the polls on the west coast or the eastern seaboard, there's a lot of negativity about sarah palin and a lot of disdain, but if you go out into the heartland of america, she does gather a lot of support and if the heartland

still matters to the republican party. i think instead of simply deriding her, they've got to sit and figure out what is her appeal out there in the middle of the countriment and i think by and large is that she represents opposition to the status quo. she's fighting the machine, whether it's the democrat or the republican and it taps into what's going on with the tea party right now. we're in an environment that is just ripe for mavericks, third party candidates like the tea party, and sarah is beading into that feeling right now. >> joe, you're probably the more negative on sarah palin running for the presidency. but you'd have to admit these the freshest and brightest new face in the republican party, aren't you. >> sure, but what does it say about the republican party. if you look at the poll, president obama's plan is slightly more popular in sarah palin and i think the republicans seem to be rejuvenated and revived in it and i'm not sure that sarah palin is exactly the person to do that.

>> you're not sure, she's a fresh bold new face and buzz. >> in philosophy and intellectual ideas they need to rebound, i'm not sure. >> the freshest, maybe the brightest i'm not so sure. yesterday evening i spent time reading a collection of reagan's personal letters and she sometimes compared, she's been compared to reagan, i think she'd like to compare herself to and when you read reagan you see here is a man whose mind kind of moves from thought to a set of ideas, from, you know, discrete thoughts to a seth ideas, lil philosophy. in palin's case you get the sense of somebody moving from cliche in ideology and trying to struggle to get the thought behind it. i think that's the problem that a lot of americans and an awful lot of conservatives have with her. it's not that they disagree with her per se, it's the distinct sense if you asked her a

follow-up question she wouldn't have an idea to answer it. >> wait a minute, i have to break in here, too, i think the important thing to realize, the sarah palin phenomenon is much more dangerous to democrats than it is an opportunity for republicans. and i think you really saw that this week with the issue over her writing on her hand. i think there's enormous number of people out there who really identify with her and when liberals think they've got a gotcha moment when they sort of see her behaving at what they see as a minor leaguer, they're putting themselves in jeopardy because a lot of people actually like her because she seems like a minor-leaguer and identify with her and they start to see the insults as direct insults to them. >> well, colin, what about her position with the tea party? i mean, is that-- she's not leading it, but she's almost as a leader of that movement. >> she has-- i think what's happening here, she's become a touchstone for a pours of the republican party and i think that's more

important than whether or not her presidential aspirations actually could or would amount to anything right now. and you know, what she really has found with the tea party is that whether or not she's exactly on board with what they represent, the people who are supporting the tea party are the same people, it's coming from the same place. >> go ahead. >> well, i think it's right that it's easy to take palin because the people who hate her are themselves so dislikable and i think colin was absolutely right. the business of writing a few lines on her hand. what on earth was wrong with na. it's better than reading scrips from a teleprompter. >> if you challenged her intellectually you said she's maybe not the kind of person who would answer a follow-up question. >> i think that's right. >> that's a mocking in a sense. >> i mean, chris wallace asked her what about the 5.7% growth in the fourth quarter, she didn't even know how to answer, answer that, she sort of touched

on unemployment, but no sense she understood this kind of what you get when-- >> and as colin suggests she's part of a larger movement. the new sarah palin, debra me dina, in the primary for government in texas. she's this close to passing kay bailey hutchinson, a sitting senator, a senior in the party. and she's about to sink below this woman. >> what's going on is stronger than mere ernestos. >> debra medina has failed to repudiate the 9/11 truthers and catching grief on that. she's rising in the polls. this is not about 9/11 truthers. politics can be spending, this is about spending, political spending and spending in washington. most of the tea party people started in opposition to that. >> joe, the tea party movement the most viable movement of the

last generations. >> well, since the 1980's, certainly. i think it is important historically and one of the things that that-- to harness that into politics, it needs the right leaders and i'm not sure that sarah palin is exactly the right person for job. >> colin, the last word. >> yeah, she doesn't need to be a leader here, she just needs to be something of a party mascot and just by doing that, she'll help shape the direction of where the party's going to go. >> all right. when we come back, the climate crackup. here at home, chances of a cap and trade bill passed in congress this year slipped from slim to none and across the ♪

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in one of our immediate response vehicles! what if mother won't let me drive? then you probably wouldn't have had an accident in the first place. and we're walkin'! and we're walkin'... making it all a bit easier -- now that's progressive! call or click today. >> next up, the climate crackup. here at home, chances of a climate bill or climate change bill passing congress this year appear slim and some key democrats are revolting against

the administration's back door efforts to regulate co 2. abroad the climate chief is under fire for findings and lashing out at his critics. joe, first of all, here at home. in congress, all things climate change, dead? >> not dead, but definitely dying. climate change is significantly downgraded in president obama's rhetoric and one reason people are starting to realize the reality of what this would impose on the economy and the administration wants to plow ahead anyway and using clean air laws that were written decade ago and never meant to apply to carbon. what you saw this past week on congress is two very powerful democratic committee chairmen, ike skelton, the head of armed services committee and peterson the head of fwruagriculture who introduced a bill who says we do not want the administration doing this without democratic consent. if we're going to do something about climate change, you should

use debate and persuasion to make your case. >> there are two tracks here, one is that the economic costs of climate change legislation are beginning to be understood by the political class. they understand that this isn't just something that can be easily dealt with. but just as importantly, the scientific case for global warming, the global warming alarmist is beginning to crumble and the u.n.'s intergovernmental panel on climate change, so-called ipcc has been under assault because they've made a number of remarkable errors in some of their headline crisis projections, they were claiming that the himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. they claimed that the global warming would destroy 40% of the amazon rain forest or could do it in just a few years, and those turn out to be totally bogus and turns out that the

ipcc relies for studies, relies for evidence from study on environmental pressure groups, so people are beginning to say, hang on, not only is this expensive, but we're not really so sure just what kind of crisis we're dealing with, if any crisis at all. >> i have to bring up a man who leads the u.n. panel. dan, want your reaction to this. in response to critics, the chairman. climate panel, he said this, he's responding to critics now and he is is a co-winner of the nobel peace prize. listen to this, they are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer. people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder. i a hope they apply it to their faces every day. this is the chairman. u.n. climate panel, a co-winner with al gore of the nobel peace prize. what do you make of this, dan? >> i make it that he's very angry and upset and he's upset because things were going his way. they thought this was a slam-dunk and built global

warming into something like save the whale campaign. everyone was supposed to be wore it. al gore wins the nobel prize and this may have "an inconvenient truth." . we're discoverings the inconvenient truth is what they want to do is really, really expensive. in the united states is an interesting benchmark when it comes to the price of energy. the price of gasoline. anytime it would rise up to $3 and the american people would push back and slamming whoever was in office. you cannot let gasoline get to be that high, but that's what they're insisting that all carbon prices rise to save the planet and the american people in the political system are saying, whoa, that's too expensive. >> worldwide is the whole idea of climate change mitigation and all of those and the rearrangement of the global economy, i think that's in full retreat. is it? >> no, i think that's right. and it's partially in full retreat because for a decade now the sort of leading

climateologists have been telling us, this has settled fine, there's no debate about it. and the rant gives you a sense of it, it's as obvious as the fact that cigarettes are bad for your health, et cetera, but in fact, there now are real questions how this is being done and since we're asked to place the huge bets and pay this enormous price to deal with climate mitigation, people are naturally taking a step back and reevaluating the science and i think the more they look at the itcc report, i am-- i feel the more they're going to see just what a weak study it is. >> well, and one of their big mistakes was taking something that was extremely complex and very contingent in simplifying it down to unequivocal and settled. and the idea that something as massive as, as huge and as raging as the earth's climate could be put into a five-page

report, i mean, it's ludicrous. >> will president obama being forced to retreat on the whole issue of global warming? >> i think it now has gone to the-- it's now become a kind of rhetorical thing, but as joe pointed out something essentially a footnote in his state of the union address. but there's a kind of religion component to this that we can't i gnor go nor. there's an aspect of the fear of the end of the world and the belief we have to change the way we live our own lives personally in order to save ourselves. that, that is a very powerful aspect to this debate. so i don't think you're going to see this disappear entirely, at least not for another few years. >> got it. when we come back, the end game in iran. what's next for that self-proclaimed nuclear state and internal revelation?

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>> and finally this week, the end game in iran. thursday marked the 31st anniversary of the islamic revolution there and in a televised address president ahmadnejad declared iran a nuclear state and says it managed to enrich uranium at the highest level yet. opposition protesters clashed with police in tehran and president obama and the international community threatened a new round of sanctions but what will ultimately bring down the regime? we're back with dan henninger, bret stevens and editorial board member max comiskey. bret, do you think that february 11th came and went, has the green revolution, the green movement there peaked? >> i think that may be the case. at least it may be true that it's been effectively crushed. you saw that the regime turned

off cell phones, google access, twitter, all of the electronics means by which the movement had been able to network and organize and come out in large numbers. there was a huge regime show of force in tehran which of course they're able to do because they're the people that have the guns, but this is-- the bigger problem is that this is a bit of a rudderless ship, the green movement. they know what they're against, they're against ahmadnejad, many of them are also against the regime in total, but they're not quite sure what they're for. it's a fairly fractious movement. this was a huge missed opportunity by the obama administration. >> has the green revolution peaked. i would say that this is really-- the fact it's rudderless, it has one goal, here you have a very young country, an increasingly better educated country unified by one thing, they don't like ahmadnejad and they hate this

regime and i don't think you can judge one day's turnout and declare it over. >> so you think they could come back in force on the streets and maybe win? >> look, i think long-term saying in the long run iran will be fine, it's always a question how long is that long run. we saw in december, there were huge protests and the regime was ready for this day and this is basically an asymmetrical battle. >> look, they're hanging people. the soviets crushed czechoslovakia and if you want to kill your population, you can crush the revolts. >> it's a stark voice internal regime change or an israeli attack as stark as that? >> i think our biggest problem is the incoherency of the obama administration's policy toward iran, it's not clear what they want to achieve whether they want to arrive at negotiation or the negotiation of iran standing down from its nuclear program is the goal, whether regime change

is the goal. the iranians themselves don't know what the target is so the west is always moving the goal posts and how are they supposed to aa chief any progress under those conditions? >> well, do you think that the obama administration could learn to live with and accommodate a nuclear iran? >> i think they'd like to-- they'd like to do that. i think a lot of voices in the administration that argue that a nuclear iran can be contained as we've contained other. >> that's another end game, isn't it? >> nuclear powers. but even realists, people like on the council of foreign relations, if you allow iran to go nuclear you'll see other middle eastern regimes also some of them enstable, some unsafery also going nuclear, so the question the administration has to ask itself, is it prepared to live with a nuclear iran and i would argue it shouldn't be and if it prepared to live also with the nuclear saudi arabia and egypt and turkey plus a nuclear

israel, a nuclear pakistan and each with daggers drawn at each other, that's a destabilizing situation. >> i think that israel feels closer and threatened and for them they have the redline and they may do something and we may not fully control what they do and worse, what they do may not even work. if they do bomb iran. so, i think, you know, that obama can look at the last six months and say diplomacy has failed. that was probably a mistake and also realized our problem in iran is not necessarily the nuclear program as much as the regime. the reason we can live with pakistan as a nuclear state because of all the dysfunctions it's a friendly regime not threatening to blow up israel. >> we could see president obama turn around and look, i've been talking for a year and gotten nowhere and i've been mocked and now i'm going to show you and attack you and now i won't help israel. >> you're playing fantasy football here. >> is that way out of bounds?

really? >> congress passed a series of comprehensive gasoline, what amounts to as gasoline sanctions on iran that could be effective and the administration has been fighting it, fighting the rear guard action making the case they prefer to have sanctions against a few figures in the rigc and a few days ago we saw the treasury department sanction revolutionary guards affiliated. and the companies are fine as far as they go. they're not going to persuade the regime that the future is better without a bomb than with one and i think that's-- >> i think it's for the united states and west to get out ahead of israel. in these discussions you always default to the israeli solution which is a strike, which will happen if the west doesn't do anything, i think the united states has to make it clear that a military option is on the table. that would at least give the israelis some comfort at that they don't have to go it alone,

but it has to be credible. do you think obama, president obama would do that make it clear a military option is on the table? >> i can't read his mind, but you know, what they have now, the other advantage of the french are on our side on this, the western world is on our side and the russians are unknown, the chinese are sort of making noise if they don't want, go ahead. but this is a moment, this is the most important issue for obama coming up in this year. >> coming to a head, got it. we have to take one more break and when we come back, our hits and misses of the week. i have asthma.

and when my symptoms-the coughing, wheezing, tightness in my chest came back- i knew i had to see my doctor. he told me i had choices in controller medicines. we chose symbicort. symbicort starts to improve my lung function within 15 minutes. that's important to me because i know the two medicines in symbicort are beginning to treat my symptoms and helping me take control of my asthma. and that makes symbicort a good choice for me. symbicort will not replace a rescue inhaler for sudden symptoms. and should not be taken more than twice a day. symbicort contains formoterol. medicines like formoterol may increase the chance of asthma-related death. so, it is not for people whose asthma is well controlled on other asthma medicines. see your doctor if your asthma does not improve

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[ announcer ] beneful prepared meals. another healthful, flavorful beneful. >> it is time now for our hits and misses of the weekment dan, you're first. >> stuart, spain needs ronald reagan. why? because the spanish people recently found out how much money air traffic contollers in spain make. the average air traffic controller there makes $513,000 a year. >> what? >> 135 make $830,000 a year. and doctors and lawyers there have quit their jobs to become air traffic contollers, i kid you not. the spanish people recently found out this was going on and they have gone nuts. so the socialist government has decided they're going to try to push the air traffic contollers wages back towards the eu norm which is something like $200,000 a year. >> matt, follow that. >> it's going to be hard, but miss to new york prosecutors for

going after hey song jenning. the chinese graduate student gave the kiss felt around the world to accompany his girlfriend to the gate. this security breach as you know, set off a panic in the airport, thousands were inconvenienced, but the tsa guy who was supposed to guard that post and i think we should give a break to the love sick. >> 20 seconds for you, colin. >> i've got a miss for washington d.c. pair adrian fenty, whose recent answer to the blizzard, wait for spring for a lack of snowplows, the businesses were paralyzed and streets were blocked up and people stranded in their home. one silver lining at least the federal government was closed. >> excellent hits and misses for the week, but i think the prize goes to dan. if you have your own, send it